Nosgoth Noir
by VladimirsAngel
Summary: Nosgoth's very own hardboiled detective finds himself in hot water  and let's face it, what water isn't hot for a Nosgothian vampire?  when his clan lord goes missing and he's on the case.
1. Chapter 1

**NOSGOTH NOIR**

_Author's Note: A twenties-style Dick Tracey Nosgothian vampire? Yes, I am aware that this concept is insane. ;) Please let me know what you think, and be kind if you can. I haven't written a fanfic in a while. _

"They tell me you're the best."

The Clan Lord's chief stooge opposite me leans across my desk and eyes me like I'm dirt under his boots. Somehow, I ain't comforted by the pretty words. This fella's big, twice as wide as my door across his shoulders and uglier than the back end of a horse. Hell, he's Dumahim, he's probably the gang's pretty boy. They're all built like boulders and have rocks between their ears.

"Okay, Arcturos," he growls, "the Lord Dumah wants to know what's happened to his brother. Aquile says he heard you…have a way of knowing things."

Ah, jeez. Aquile. I knew I shoulda beat the little weasel in when I had the chance ten years ago.

"I ain't a Seer, if that's what you heard," I say, opening a drawer and starting to fish about among the junk. Not that I'd admit it if I was, you know? Seers have this habit of not living long. The Emperor seems to have this edgy dislike of them, and who's to blame him? We're vampires. The only thing we need to know about the future is where the next human slave's coming from.

"No, that's not what I heard," Ugly says, rolling his eyes. Outside my door, I can hear the Dumahim drones he brought as insurance shuffling their feet. It's raining out in Nosgoth tonight, a hard unforgiving rain, and the boys are restless. They don't wanna get caught in it on the way back to their clan ground. It's a killer.

"I heard you're a detective," Ugly continues, and he sounds bored, then in typical Dumahim style he repeats himself. "They tell me you're the best."

Fact is, I ain't just the best. I'm the only one. It's a dirty job, and I'm not gong to pretend I have to do it. Again, if we're talking facts, I gotta admit, I love it. It's a hobby. Everyone's got to have a hobby, right? Except that a lot of the time, we don't. Vampires don't have hobbies, humans have hobbies. I keep my nose clean in the eyes of the Clans by not telling anyone. You need to know why? Just take a look at Lord Rahab. Rumour has it he likes to keep goldfish in a tank and reads them poetry every morning when he goes to bed. It's now getting to the point where a Rahabim will be beaten up in his own territory for having a sire who's too human. I wouldn't be a Rahabim if you paid me.

So I never told anyone: except godsdamn Aquile, the squealer who's got it coming to him as soon as I get shot of Ugly and his goons.

"I may be in the business of finding out facts from time to time," I say, leaning back in my chair and biting off the dead-ash end of my cigarette. Yeah, I smoke. But never in public, and only when I need to. I get a little nervous sometimes. To hide it, I put my feet up on my desk, tilt my chair, and look Ugly right in his face, which is no picnic, let me tell you. "What's it to you?"

"To me? Nothing. To my Lord? Plenty." He stares at me, curling his lip in distaste at my cloud of cigarette smoke. "He needs to know what had become of his brother, your lord, Raziel. Do you think you can do that?"

"Yes, sir, I think I can do that."

He nods, smugly. Like I could refuse, right? I'm not even twenty years dead.

"The Emperor doesn't need to know about this. In fact, if he does hear about it, it'll be your head."

Ugly pushes back his chair and pauses in my doorway.

"And stop polluting your body with burning that human weed." With that, he's gone, slamming the door almost hard enough to break the stained glass panel.

"Hey, watch it," I call after him, "those things cost two or three human slaves to make!"

Silence. Just the hammering of the rain. What a sour puss. Would it kill the clan soldiers to crack a smile once in a while?

I stub out my cigarette and sit back down. My first really big case, and for once I don't have to do any ground work, not counting a deep and meaningful with my good buddy Aquile.

After all, every Razielim knows Lord Raziel's missing. He's been missing for weeks.

The stained glass nameplate in my door reads Helios Arcturos in dark red letters. I wasn't kidding to that Ugly cat - it's a tough skill, setting blood into cooling glass, so I couldn't afford to have the words "Private Detective" underneath. I will one day, when my genius is recognised and I don't have to hide no more.

I'm waiting for the rain to stop so I can go out on the track of Aquile. He may have an almost fatal habit of singing like a canary to anyone with bigger fangs than him, but he's the closest thing I've got to a friend and if I'm going out investigating I need to know someone's got my back.

I take a turn in front of the mirror. The humans think we don't cast reflections, but I'm happy to say they're wrong. Not bad. Not bad at all, even if I do say so myself. There's a dozen places on my body I'm packing heat, but you wouldn't know it to look at me, and you can't smell the oiled blades either. I got this thing I can do with oilcloth and cloves - but that's a secret and if I told you, I'd have to kill you. And my special favourite piece, the throwing knife I've had since I was reborn, tucked into my shoulder armour.

Sure. I wear the armour, but I'm not a soldier. Not strong enough. Too many smarts, I like to say. I use my brain, not my teeth. It doesn't make me popular, but I wasn't put on Nosgoth to be popular. I was put here to be useful to my lord.

Trouble is, my lord ain't here.

If I'm such hot shakes as a private dick, why didn't I go looking for him myself, you ask? Well, here's the skinny. Lord Raziel's not the only big noise in the Razielim these days, and I got bigger problems to deal with than him being away.

I - we, the Razielim - we got Lord Escobar, and he's such bad news the papers couldn't make headlines big enough for him.

I turn up the collar on my clan cloak, specially made for me in secret in the pits of the capital, tie up my hair in a high plait, and step out into the fresh air of the Nosgoth night.


	2. Chapter 2

**NOSGOTH NOIR**

I don't like going over to Aquile's place. The little squirt got a bad deal, what with being lower-ranking than a swamp rat in the Clan and a weirdo to boot. He lives right on the boundaries of clan ground, in a shack that barely keeps out the light and lets the rain in by the bed. I don't take no invites to stay over for a bite at Aquile's serious. The oddness of his eating habits don't even bear repeating.

Still, it ain't his fault, and I guess that's why I'm his friend. In private, anyways. In public I get to smack him around and stamp on his neck same as all the rest. He understands. "Helios," he says to me, "I wouldn't have you jeopardize your standing just to stick up for me." So you see, a good kid underneath, it's just a shame about the weird. Escobar likes weird about as much as he likes vampire hunters. It's part of his way of toadying up to the Emperor. Anything new, anything odd, anything that shouldn't be – Escobar laps it up like a dog and then drools it out in front of Lord Kain's sainted feet. Kain's a caring overlord, he likes to take an interest in his subjects. And the last thing any fledge in any clan wants is the Emperor getting interested in them, know what I mean? That's what Lord Raziel's for. Say what you like about the guy, he was good at keeping Kain's interest firmly aimed at the shiny bits in his armour and the nasty ideas in his head. He protected us. And now he's gone, and I can't say I don't have my suspicions that he may have been removed by a higher power – and I ain't talking about the Dark Gods.

Listen to me, shooting my mouth off! I'm gonna end up bunking with Aquile in his damp, bright rat-hole if I don't watch my step. A good detective knows when to keep his mouth shut. A great detective knows to make sure no-one cares about his mouth in the first place, capisce?

"Hey, Arcturos!"

Ah, damn. Agremor and Ithiel. Escobar's favourite boys. If they find out I'm working for Dumah these days, I'm dog meat.

"Hey, boys, how's it going? Your master let you off the leash?"

Agremor growls. I forget. They ain't got no sense of humour, or at least, in Ithiel's case, no sense of humour anyone sane can understand. And besides, from what I hear about Escobar from some of the ladies who works in his house, I may have hit a little too close to the nerve with that leash comment.

Hey, what're you talking about? Sure I know some ladies! I may be a bit of an outcast but I'm not a monk or a hermit, get it? And who's telling this story, anyway? Right. So zip your lips and let me talk. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Escobar's prettyboys. As I was saying, these two are not a low-rank's best buddy. Agremor is almost like a Dumahim in his blunt-headed desire to smash things to pulp, and Ithiel's nuts. I mean really, nuts. Wackier than a human in a room full of Melchahim fledges. He has this way of looking through you as if he's seeing a whole bunch of magical leprechauns hovering over your left shoulder, and what's more, each and every one of those leprechauns is flipping him the bird.

"Think yourself above us, don't you, Arcturos?" Agremor's moving, now, walking towards me deliberate-like. Small rocks fall from the overhang. The ground shakes. Nah, not really, but then the world got no respect for drama. You get the picture. Agremor is huge.

"Above you?" I'm backing up, now. "No, no. Not at all. You got me all wrong. Me, above you? Not a chance."

Hells, he's almost seven foot tall. The Pillars have a job being above him. Ithiel giggles. Even though he's crazy, I think he's a lot smarter than his good buddy and he sees right through my evasive words. And it's real hard to stay focused with those mad yellow peepers of his fixed on my every move.

"Where are you going?" Agremor persists, stopping toe to toe with me and inhaling my scent as if it will tell him something he doesn't know against my will. He's welcome. Our noses are good, but not good enough to sniff out a liar. Lucky for me. All he gets to find out is that I'm afraid, I'm on the edge of hungry and I don't want to be near him. Big surprise. "Going to get a bite to eat, then taking some leftovers over to a friend of mine," I say, forcing myself to tilt my head respectfully to one side. If Lord Raziel could see me now, baring my veins to these two mooks, he'd smack all three of us so hard you'd be able to hear us yelling from the bottom of the Abyss.

Ithiel shoves his face rudely under my chin. It takes me all I got not to gag or recoil. This only happened to me once before, if you don't count getting turned, and that time was when Raziel himself happened by and caught me playing footsie with a girl who was way out of my league. That time I thought my last sight in living Nosgoth was going to be small chunks of my own throat flesh bouncing merrily off my boots while the girl I'd taken a shine to rubbed herself all over my clan lord like some kind of cat. But it turns out the boss had been feeling lenient towards his own sex that evening, or else I'd just drawn the luckiest hand in my life. He killed the girl, snagged my scruff with his fangs and shook me like a rat, just once, then passed on like a ghost into the citadel. He'd been so close I'd smelt the rank of him on me, a heavy powerful scent like hot metal on a foggy day. There ain't a vampire alive in Nosgoth can stand on his own two feet for long when his clan lord wants him down.

And I ain't ashamed to say I ran for it and didn't show my face outside in clan grounds for a week. It was shortly after that I took up smoking.

What I wouldn't give now for a decent cloud of the old human weed. Ithiel smells as crazy as he is, and to have his teeth this close to my skin is making me almost want to take a dive into the lake just to burn the reek off me.

"Listen, Helios," his thin, insinuating voice says, close to my chin. Always uses first names. Ithiel wants to be everybody's best friend. Until he wants to wring your neck, that is. "Lord Escobar has told us to keep an eye out for incursions into clan territory. He believes that in the temporary absence of our own Lord Raziel, his ambitious brothers may try and take over our home. And you know what would happen if they were by some terrible chance successful, don't you, hmmm?"

Sure I do. Same thing that happens when a new daddy lion moves in and takes over a pride of mummy and baby lions. Smack. Crunch. Bye-bye, Razielim. I ain't stupid.

"Yeah," is all I say. trying not to flinch as Ithiel moves behind me. "Yeah. I do."

"So I'm sure we can trust you to be a faithful little fledge and tell us if you see any invaders, can't we?"

And I start sweating cold, even though we ain't big on sweat, us vamps, because I suddenly realize Ithiel knows. He can smell Dumah's boys all over me. He's got me marked for a two-faced son-of-a-bitch.

"Yeah," I repeat, making sure I sound normal. "You got it."

Agremor's itching to ditch me and get going, and painful though this is for me I have to say I'm glad he's there, because his fretting makes Ithiel antsy and he's more likely to peel off me and get moving. Ithiel's still right up close and personal, which is making me more uncomfortable by the minute. I heard from those same clan ladies that Escobar and his cronies don't pay much attention to personal space in the most personal of ways, you get my drift? And I don't play those kinda games, especially not with high-ranks. Those kind of games have a way of turning sour real fast, and if you ain't careful you can end up burning with the fishes. I don't want Ithiel taking a fancy to me.

"Come on," Agremor rumbles in his big bass drum of a voice, "work first, fun later. We have an uprising to quell on the east side."

"Oh," says Ithiel, giving me a big, friendly smile as he draws back, "and a small human massacre isn't fun? You disappoint me, Agremor my brother, you truly do."

And like that – gone. Both of them turn and trot off like good little armoured puppydogs. I can breathe again, if I had to that is. The last thing I need right now, with Lord Dumah as a client, is to see my name added to Escobar's List of Exceptions. That list may be an urban myth, it may be a rumour put about by his stooges to make him look big, but even if it ain't real I don't wanna be on it, you get me? The word on the street is that the list contains exactly what it says on the tin. Exceptions. Things that shouldn't be, and things that shortly aren't after Escobar notices them.

Still, I can't help wondering, because the Dark Gods saw fit to give me a brain that don't do nothing _but_ wonder – why is there even a need to quell an uprising on the east side? There's been no trouble for years, what's got the mortals all riled up? And when you get right down to it, why are Escobar's lapdogs going to deal with it if it's just a little local trouble? There's plenty of fledges you could sacrifice to that cause, stupid bloodthirsty patsies that they are when they're newly turned. And usually that's exactly what Lord Raziel would order, because he has his sire's sense of humour sometimes and likes to see young up-and-coming members of his clan run screaming from a few human farmboys armed with buckets of water. He says it teaches them not to underestimate either him or humanity.

But once again I keep coming back to the fact that Lord Raziel ain't here, a fact that doesn't seem to have figured high on Escobar's famous list, big surprise again, and I gotta get my nose back on the case. I check the skies for rainclouds, check the trail for high-ranks, then set off again to Aquile's with my brain buzzing like a nest of wasps.


	3. Chapter 3

**NOSGOTH NOIR**

**_Author's Note: I apologise for length of time between updates!_**

See, when I say "fresh" air it's kind of the same way in which I say "Lord" Escobar. Air around here ain't fresh. Hasn't been for years. It stinks, especially near the capital, and after the rain it's worse, washing all the filth from the pits and the corpses out onto the streets.

You ever try walking down a street after a rainstorm and not getting your heels burnt? Not as easy as it looks, and in this place the rain seems to come all too frequently. Aquile says it's the way the Dark Gods have of keeping us under control.

I think Aquile needs to do a little more bowing and scraping and a little less thinking, you know what I mean? but the kid ain't too bright in a specialised kinda way. Bright enough to know _why _the thunderbolt's about to scorch his ass, but not bright enough to get out the way.

I push open the door of Aquile's little pad. Razielim like me don't knock. If he's doing anything in there that ain't quite legal, better I'm the one who gets an eyeful rather than Ithiel and his block-headed friend.

The smell of blood hits me like a slap in the kisser. Blood is so strong a scent it's practically a visual. With my eyes closed I could see the headless body lying in the corner of Aquile's room, and the bright, tempting splash of it paints Aquile himself in holiday colours. The kid is knelt over the stiff with his head down, and for a happy minute I just reckon he's having an early lunch. But my nose isn't deceived as easily as my eyes. That's no lunch. That's murder.

That stiff is a vamp, like us.

"Hells, Aquile," I say, leaning myself up against the wall as casual as I can and lighting up with claws that tremble just a little. "Never knew you had it in you. Who was that?"

The kid looks up at me. He's got blood all over his chest, his arms and his head. His hair is clotted with it. I guess I should've mentioned it, the odd thing about Aquile that makes him noticeable, but then I don't like to bring it up. Like I said, I like the kid, and Escobar don't like exceptions, so we don't talk about it.

Aquile's hair is blond. Not white, like the Emperor's, but yellow, blond, the colour of sand. I'm not saying you don't get blonds in this neighbourhood, but it's rare. Lord Raziel's no blond, and neither are his clan. Generally.

Still, Aquile's looking more like a bombshell redhead than a blond right about now. His big yellow eyes look kinda glazed, like he's had a few too many. "Hey," I say, taking a drag on my smoke. "I'm talking to you, buddy. As a friend. You know what a friend is, Aquile? Someone who doesn't squeal like a pig when the pressure's on. Someone who doesn't spill the beans to Lord Dumah's heavies about my little sideline. Someone who comes around visiting and doesn't throw his toys out the pram over a small thing like a headless stiff on the furnishings, capsice?"

"I didn't kill him," says Aquile, and he's got a quavery note in his voice I don't like.

See, Ithiel's not running on a full tank of sanity on good days, but he's the mean kind of crazy, the sort that'll pull your fangs out by the roots and let you starve in front of a chained slave. Aquile is also a bit crazy. He's the yellow kind of crazy, though. The weak, irresponsible kind. He gets scared easier than a human broad in Kain's lap. The problem with that kind of crazy is that it's even harder to predict than Ithiel's kind of crazy. What would Aquile do, if pushed hard enough and long enough?

What _has_ he done?

"You didn't kill him? Surprising how many innocent people I find crouched over dead bodies."

I push off the wall, step in, and crouching over the body press my tongue to the stump of neck.

Dark Gods divided. It's a Dumahim, for sure. The blood sings on my tongue like sour lemon. Powerful blood, a soldier's blood. This ex-vamp was a high-rank, or at least an up-and-coming medium-rank. Not the kind of number you mess with. I flick out my tongue again, taking a clot of dark blood into my mouth so I know I ain't mistaken. What, you think I'm disgusting? It's not like I live on it, we have humans for that. It's, whattya call it, scientific. It's also the main way I find out things. I got sensitive tastes.

And a sensitive guy like me knows Aquile's in way over his head if he's killed a Dumahim soldier in Razielim territory with Lord Raziel taking vacation and Lord Dumah's stooges sniffing around my office. I turn my fiercest look on little Aquile, who cowers. Good. He may not have half the brain his sire gave him when he got made, but he's got brain enough to still be cowering-scared and not stupid-brave-scared.

"Now you listen to me," I growl, "and you'd better listen good, because if you don't you'll be kissing your ears goodbye for the last time, you get me? You say you didn't kill this guy. I believe you. You ain't got the muscle, Aquile, you ain't got the stones. But if you don't tell me the truth about how this all went down, I swear, friend or no friend, I'm gonna drag you out and drop you in the nearest lake."

And for emphasis, I drop my lit cigarette into the pool of vampire blood at my feet. It makes an expressive little hissing noise, a lot like _fssszzt_. Smoke spirals up, and Aquile whimpers. His eyes are huge, his pupils tiny dark marks in an expanse of muddy yellow iris like wet clay. For a minute I think he's out of his skull on something shamanistic, but his scent tells me otherwise. He's just frightened, and who wouldn't be?

"I…I found him," he whispers, eventually. "In the pass…the rocks…I followed the smell of the blood…"

_Found _him? Dead mid-ranks are not in the habit of turning up like ten-cent pieces in front of low-rank fledges out for an evening stroll. In the capital, after a fight? Sure. But left out in the badlands, with no evidence as to who is now claiming higher rank on grounds of dead vamp's boots? No way.

"Okay," I agree, not pressing. For now. "Then here's one for the win, Aquile. Where is his head?"

Aquile looks me dead in the eye, and a high-pitched whistling sound escapes his pale lips. It takes me a moment to realize that he's laughing, his fangs exposed, his face twitching. And he raises his clawed hand, pointing upwards to the ceiling. My eye automatically follows.

There's no dead face grimacing down at me. There's nothing up there at all, except sub-standard rafters and probably a few mice that I smelt on my way in. I give Aquile the hard eye, but he continues to laugh in that loopy way, so I even go outside and check the roof and eaves for stray heads. Still nothing. Defeated, I go back in, where Aquile's laughter is really beginning to give me the creeps.

"Up!" he giggles. "His head's all the way up!"

Did I mention that the other thing Lord Escobar makes Exceptions for is weak clanlings with obvious toys in the attic? Being Aquile's friend just got a whole lot more dangerous, as if that was possible what with the headless corpse and all…


End file.
